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They walked Rob Picciolo

Posted by
John Autin

You probably know that no other hitter ever walked as rarely as Rob Picciolo(min. 1,000 PAs and excluding pitchers). Picciolo drew 25 walks in 1,720 PAs, a rate of 1.5%; the next-lowest rate is Whitey Alperman's 1.7%.

Picciolo owns the two longest known streaks by a position player who started and did not walk. This list of the longest such streaks for 1970-90 is kind of fun:

No other player from 1919-2011 had a streak longer than 70 games (Mariano Duncan).

If it hadn't been for the White Sox, Picciolo's walk rate would have been less than 1%. He walked 10 times in 166 PAs against the ChiSox, a dizzying 6.0%. After not walking in his first 12 career games, he walked in his very first game against the White Sox, then did it again the next day and the day after that. This unlikely 3-day walking binge was capped by his only 2-walk game. (The only other time Picciolo walked in two straight games, the "streak" took him two seasons, the last game of 1980 and the first of '81.)

Picciolo's only intentional walk came from Mike Proly of the White Sox, natch. In the bottom of the 9th, tie game, runners on the corners and no outs, Proly gave Picciolo a pass to load the bases for ... Rickey Henderson?!?

Well, Rickey was a rookie then, and not yet walking at the rate that would eventually make him the all-time walks leader (since surpassed); he also had yet to hit his first HR, in over 300 PAs. Anyway, as you might guess, Rickey drew a walk to force in the game-winning run. He would draw another 2,100+ walks in his career, but just one other "walk-off" walk -- and a certain synchronicity may be evident in the identify of that pitcher.

Back to Picciolo: His 25 walks came against 25 different pitchers. Don Cooper has the distinction of walking Picciolo in their only meeting, which apparently qualified him to become a pitching coach ... for the White Sox. (I'm kidding, of course. We all know that the only qualification for being a pitching coach is that you were a lousy pitcher yourself, and Cooper aced that test with ease.)

And so, in our roundabout way, we come at last to the original theme of the post:"They walked Rob Picciolo."